


Mail-time at Noon

by Audrey221B



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Audrey221B/pseuds/Audrey221B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John follow Mycroft's tip about a mysterious trail of letters addressed to someone they know to be dead. However, as the tale unfolds, Sherlock discovers that Moriarty has once again been playing heartstrings--from the grave?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Text

_Sherlock stared listlessly at his ceiling—positively at a loss for something to do. His violin sat alone in the corner, tempting him with its vivacious monotony.  And yet, Sherlock simply sat, his fingers folded to his nose in thought. To him, these thoughts danced in an endless string of the only lovers Sherlock deigned to take. His phone rang, and Sherlock closed his eyes in reflective exasperation (conflicting emotions were Sherlock’s specialty. Mycroft, having discovered this at a young age, wisely commented that this tendency was most likely a mechanism devised to prevent others from analyzing Sherlock the way Sherlock would analyze himself.)  Then, in a dramatic (Sherlock loved dramatics) motion, he slowly opened his cat like eyes—the pupils darting to the corners of his eyes to see his phone irritatingly out of reach on the night-stand.  Quickly, in a motion that would make any cat proud, Sherlock swung his legs out of bed and elongated his spine. His reached for the phone. A sigh. No—not a sigh, Sherlock would never sigh—a moan of extreme anguish for his arch enemy had discovered him at last!_

 

“Sherlock, I swear, you tell me to write something for you, and I do, and then you take it over in a petty strike?” John scowled from his spot at his computer whilst Sherlock loomed over him. Sherlock’s hands lay posed on the keys, finishing the rather insulting (yet still flattering) portrait of a bored Sherlock that John had started.

“Well, you know John, you lack that poetic ‘ring’ that makes my writing superior in every possible way.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows and smiled a small smirk whilst leisurely stalking to the fridge (mostly due to the fact that staring into the fridge an uttering small snorts of dissatisfaction made him and his bathrobe look impossibly cool).

“Well Sherlock, who can compete with you and your poetic streak when you look like you went to the same bloody barber as Percy Shelley.”

John closed the computer, content that his line had bested Sherlock’s wit. “Don’t be ridiculous John, you know I cut my own hair—I would never let a barber hold scissors so close to my neck.”

 Sherlock collapsed onto the couch and pulled a newspaper up to his face, and suddenly pulled it down, feeling a fresh wave of clever retaliations coming on. “You might ask me to do yours if you, for some reason beyond my imagining, ever chose to stop looking like a hobbit.”

John, exasperated, ripped Sherlock’s phone away from the protesting cat and said:

“Excuse me Sherlock, for thinking I could compare you to a renowned Romantic poet without being mercilessly ridiculed for my ears—my sincerest apologies.” At least, that was what John intended to say, but at seeing the name on the phone, he froze, his mouth still rounded in an attempt to form a vowel.

“‘M’ for Mycroft, or ‘M’ for Moriarty Sherlock?” John’s whisper rang with accusation.

“I told you—my arch enemy.” Sherlock replied evenly, swirling his coat around is shoulders and shrugging into its mysterious black folds. John clucked with exasperation at the extremely vague nature of that statement

(Sherlock loved to be vague because, in Sherlockian Land, vague paired nicely with dramatic).

Sherlock merely stared and threw on his scarf.

“We are going to go see a man about a letter.”


	2. Box 88760

“Ah, the post office,” John sagely commented “you mind telling me why we are here? I know you like to keep your surprises, but I’ve become rather put up with being siphoned away by Mycroft only to find out that you have been working on a case of national importance. So what is it? Someone mailing letters that explode or something similarly nefarious?”

John rambled on while Sherlock, paying no attention to John whatsoever ran his fingers along the edges of the brass letterboxes on the walls.

Stopping suddenly in a motion that sent John tumbling into Sherlock’s back, Sherlock whirled his  coat around and snapped his head to focus on number 88760—a completely ordinary box. Taking out a key from his pocket and stared it as if it were foreign to him.

 “Sherlock, what is it? Is that the key to… oh…well is that your box then?”

John tried to piece together the facts, and yet, he knew Sherlock was far too lazy to arrange for a second location for his mail—even too lazy to receive mail anywhere but on his phone.

 “Don’t be ridiculous John, this is my mother’s mailbox. She took me and Mycroft here when we were young. We got lollypops at the desk.”

Sherlock added the last part sarcastically and slid the key easily into the keyhole.

 John stared, quiet. Sherlock never shared memories from his past. Perhaps this was simply a one time share because the situation warranted an explanation. Perhaps it was a lie, devised to divert John from the truth.

Sherlock reached inside the box, and slowly reached inside, his watch clanking against the inside of the metal container.

 “It’s empty.” An urgent, incredulous tone crept into Sherlock’s otherwise deep, even voice.

“No Sherlock, it’s a message alright, just not, well…you know, on paper.”

John pointed to the bottom of the box. On the bottom of the box, a note was etched as if it had been dug out painstakingly with a knife. Sherlock’s head snapped around to glare at the message that had escaped his attention.

Sherlock murmured the message in a low voce “It says…look for my letters precious. Love…Mummy dearest”.

Sherlock ran his hand over the message, his eyes whirring in an attempt to see the clues that he was sure lurked under the surface of the box. He quickly scanned for anagrams, for codes, for anything that would indicate a lie, a possibility his mother had sent the note.

 Sherlock quickly brushed this thought aside. He had seen his mother’s body with his own eyes. He had taken her pulse and pushed his own face into her dark brown hair, smelling the last traces of her perfume.

He had examined her eyes, they had been dead, lifeless.

Science, always something to depend on, proved what he had already known, and Sherlock knew that proof always solved the case.

Here, there was no proof. Mycroft had kept the box after their mother’s death. They had always kept the box empty, as a sign of respect or, as Sherlock suspected of his greatest adversary, a sign of Mycroft’s perpetual laziness.

Mycroft had sent the note to his phone, “888760” it had said. But Mycroft would never pose as their mother. The note had the lilting quality of Moriarty. The perfect blend of sarcasm and deadly undertones. All of this of course, was cast with a semblance of sanity. It appeared as a clue. Clues, Moriarty knew, were irresistible to Sherlock.

And yet, as Sherlock turned his face from his hands in the box to John’s puzzled face, Sherlock’s mouth turned up in a grim smile. He knew Moriarty was going to lose.

Sherlock was going to get help from a person he was certain had access to the surveillance of the post office. He was going to see Mycroft. 


End file.
